Hungerford Massacre | World History Project Source: 'Inside Story: 20 years on - how the Hungerford massacre was reported'; The Independent, August 13, 2007 Added by: Colin Harris The Hungerford massacre occurred in Hungerford, Berkshire, England, on 19 August 1987. The gunman, 27-year-old Michael Robert Ryan, armed with two semi-automatic rifles and a handgun, shot and killed sixteen people including his mother, and wounded fifteen others, then fatally shot himself. A report on this incident was commissioned by the Home Secretary, Douglas Hurd, from the Chief Constable of Thames Valley Police, Colin Smith. It remains, along with the 1996 Dunblane massacre and the 2010 Cumbria shootings, one of the worst criminal atrocities involving firearms in British history. The massacre led to the Firearms Act 1988, which banned the ownership of semi-automatic centre-fire rifles and restricted the use of shotguns with a magazine capacity of more than two rounds. The Hungerford Report had demonstrated that Ryan's collection of weapons was legally licensed.

Source: Wikipedia Added by: Colin Harris A man has shot 14 people dead in the Berkshire town of Hungerford. Police identified the gunman as Michael Ryan, 27. Local people described him as a "loner" and a "gun fanatic". Ryan was armed with an automatic rifle, a pistol and at least one hand grenade when he went on the rampage early on Wednesday afternoon. His victims included his mother and a police officer who tried to tackle him in Hungerford which lies about 60 miles (96km) west of London. Source: '1987: Gunman kills 14 in Hungerford rampage'; BBC On This Day, news.bbc.co.uk Added by: Colin Harris The local Hungerford police station was in the process of being renovated and had only two telephone lines working on that day. In addition to this, the local telephone exchange could not handle the amount of 999 calls that were being made, as Ryan wreaked havoc across the suburbs and people desperately tried phoning for help. In a further twist of fate, the local police helicopter was in for repair but police mechanics eventually made it ready for flight and it was deployed at around the time Ryan shot his mother.

Adding to the sound of gunfire in the area was the fact that the Thames Valley firearms squad were in training, about 40 miles away. BBC NEWS | UK | England | Berkshire | A town recovering from a massacre A town recovering from a massacre By James Clarke BBC News Michael Ryan hid in a school before turning his gun on himself The afternoon of Wednesday, 19 August, 1987 was one which would change the small town of Hungerford forever. Michael Ryan, a 27-year-old unemployed labourer who was one of the town's 5,000 residents, went on the rampage through its streets killing 16 people, including his own mother, before shooting himself in the head. His motive for the killings was never established and the massacre left Hungerford as a quiet town trying to come to terms with an event which had made it known around the world. Ron Tarry, who had become mayor of Hungerford a few months earlier and still lives in the Berkshire town, told BBC News: "The first thing was absolute shock and disbelief, we couldn't believe it had happened and that it had happened here.

"Then it sank in and we realised it was one of our own townsmen." Gradually we came to terms with it but for some people things were not the same again and never will be Ron Tarry, mayor in 1987 Ryan was dressed in combat gear and armed with a Kalashnikov assault rifle, another automatic rifle, a Beretta pistol and at least one hand grenade. His first victim was a woman he shot dead while she was having a picnic with her children at about 1230 BST in Savernake Forest - about 10 miles (16km) from Hungerford. Shortly before 1300 BST firefighters were called to a house fire in Hungerford, where they found the body of Ryan's mother, Dorothy, in the home she had shared with her son. He had shot her dead. Soon afterwards he moved into the town's main shopping area and began firing indiscriminately at people without warning, killing his neighbours, motorists driving through the town and a police officer who tried to tackle him. About 5,000 people lived in Hungerford at the time Ryan eventually barricaded himself inside John O'Gaunt School, the school he had gone to as a boy.

After negotiations with a police officer who attempted to persuade him to come out of the school building, Ryan shot himself in the head, bringing the massacre to an end. He was the 17th person to die and 15 others had been injured. Mr Tarry said: "The general feeling was shock and disbelief and then a willingness to help the community. "I suppose it was some weeks, some months, before the town returned to normal. "We couldn't get rid of the press, the media and television crews for weeks and there was a memorial service held in the street in October. Most people in Hungerford attended that. It was very difficult, but I was no different to anybody else, everybody lost someone or knew somebody involved Peter Harries, present mayor of Hungerford "But gradually we came to terms with it but for some people things were not the same again and never will be. "It's very difficult to know how people are coping. They may have said they were OK, but you never really knew how they were, people put on a brave face." The present mayor, Peter Harries, was living in Hungerford in 1987, but worked outside the town.

He said: "I had a phone call from my youngest son to say this was going on, so I came home and got here about one o'clock. "It was a bit difficult because I could not find my oldest son Carl and I didn't find him until about 8pm. He had only come home on leave to visit us and of course this all happened." The reason Carl Harries, now a soldier serving in Basra, could not be contacted that afternoon was because he was going around the town helping people who had been hurt. His father said: "It was very difficult, but I was no different to anybody else, everybody lost someone or knew somebody involved. "It was quite scary and you will never forget that, but we need to let it go by." Kalashnikov rifles like that used by Ryan were outlawed a year later Hungerford's residents know the shootings are the main reason many people have heard of the town. Mr Tarry said: "To some extent of course people think of Hungerford as the town where the shootings happened rather than the pleasant country town that it is and people came to the town to see where it had happened, which we didn't like.

"But the reaction here was good and the town pulled together very well, everybody wanted to do what was best for the town. "Money began coming in the day after the shooting and when the money first started pouring in, we had no method of dealing with it. "So a fund was set up and a lot of people worked on behalf of the fund and more than ï¿½1m came in." Money went to families of the dead, people who had been injured and could not work, and some to those whose houses had been damaged when Ryan set fire to his own home. It's history - it's the benchmark for all the others that have happened Peter Harries A memorial bearing the names of each of those who died was put up by the recreation ground where several of the killings happened. On the 20th anniversary of the massacre, a short service will be held there. Mr Tarry and Mr Harries will be among those speaking and both hope it will be a quiet event. Mr Harries said: "We want to try to keep it low key, but with something like this you can't, we have had a lot of media around.

"The people that were there will never forget it, but we're not trying to make it into a big deal, and then after this year we will probably be looking to remember it just in our local church services." Mr Tarry said: "I expect a lot of the relatives won't come, a lot has happened since then. "Those who were very small children are now adults, others who were older have passed on I'm afraid." A year after the massacre, British gun laws were changed and semi-automatic weapons such as Ryan's Kalashnikov were outlawed, partly influenced by the events of that Wednesday afternoon in Hungerford. Mr Harries said: "It's history - it's the benchmark for all the others that have happened. "It has a place in the town but there are so many other things that go on in the town, which hopefully deflect attention from that." Hungerford revisited | UK news | The Guardian Crime Hungerford revisited When Michael Ryan went on a killing spree in Hungerford in 1987, the news – like last week's shootings in Cumbria – shocked the country. But how did the town heal its wounds?

Hungerford High Street as it is now, 23 years after Michael Ryan rampaged through the town. Photograph: Sam Frost for the Guardian Thursday 10 June 2010 03.01 EDT First published on Thursday 10 June 2010 03.01 EDT Share on Messenger Close The relative of a woman who was injured in what was then the worst shooting spree in British history opens the door, steps out into the drizzle, and closes it quietly behind him. "Twenty-three years and it still gets brought up," he says heavily. "Wherever you go." As soon as his wife saw a reporter step on to their drive, the man says, she scarpered to the back of the house. No, he says, he won't talk about Hungerford, that awful, surreal day in August 1987 when a 27-year-old local man, Michael Ryan, shot dead 16 people, and injured a further 15, around this affluent market town in rural Berkshire. Hungerford does not want to remember its massacre. And it does not want to be remembered for its massacre.

Asking some of its 6,000 residents about the events of 19 August is like conducting the dreaded death-knock – where a reporter is tasked to visit the home of the newly bereaved – on an entire town. Most people are not grief-stricken but angry that their friendly little town is a byword, around the world, for mass murder. "I was there. It's gone. People want to try to forget about it," says an elderly woman on a quiet residential road that Ryan terrorised. Is that the best way? "I think so," she says firmly. When news broke of Derrick Bird's shootings in Cumbria , the residents of Hungerford knew what was coming next. Their hearts sank when they saw the TV vans return. "Oh God, they are not going to bring that up again?" exclaims a shopper, when told I am from the media. Everywhere I turn, the town seems to have set its mind on forgetting. Shortly after the shooting, some residents wanted a granite memorial in the town centre; instead, a small plaque was placed at the entrance to the football club on the edge of town.

"1987 tragedy memorial" it says, obliquely, and lists the names of the 16 dead. The 17th, Ryan himself, is not mentioned. There was a memorial service on the 20th anniversary of the tragedy but there is not a special service every year. Instead, on 19 August, the names of the dead are read out in church and the flag on the town hall flies at half-mast. Twenty-three years on, most victims' families have moved away. Destroyed homes have been rebuilt. The secondary school where Ryan holed up and turned one of his guns on himself was repainted and reopened for the autumn term as usual that year. One teenager who went there reveals he did not know his great aunt was killed by Ryan until he watched a recent documentary on the shootings. Only then did his parents tell him. Is Hungerford's determination to forget the best way to deal with the trauma? "Most people don't want to talk about it or remember it," says Ron Tarry, 84, sitting in his bungalow a block from where Ryan roamed. Tarry, who was mayor at the time, is willing to talk about the tragedy.

He still regards it as his duty to politely field every intrusive media request. "You go all over the world and say you're from Hungerford and people say 'Michael Ryan' and '16 people were shot dead' – it's not the association a nice town wants," says Tarry. "The story of Michael Ryan doesn't do Hungerford credit. It makes it out to be a lawless town." This approach seems very English and rather repressed; Hungerford appears most troubled by its own reputation. Only gradually, after a day spent in the town, do I realise how unreasonable this judgment is. Just as the press has praised the quiet dignity of people in Cumbria while privately bewailing the absence of media-friendly outpourings of emotion, so I was unfairly expecting Hungerford to instantly serve up its grief and trauma to me, a complete stranger, after 23 years. Following their initial refusals, however, most begin to talk a little bit. And then their memories – of where they were on that day, of what they felt, of what happened next – tumble out, and it is as if I am not there at all and people are back in 1987, reliving the awful vividness of that day.

At one point Jack Williams, another former mayor of the town, pauses. "I'm just sitting here with everything going through my mind," he says, calmly enough, but looking not far from tears. 'He was a bit of a loner' Michael Ryan was the only child of Dorothy and Alfred "Buck" Ryan. Buck "was a bit of a tyrant [at home], so I'm told," says Williams, who knew Ryan's father through Buck's work as a building inspector. Ryan's mother worked at the local hospital. Ryan did labouring work, dressed in combat fatigues and was obsessed with guns. Given a job clearing footpaths in the town, Ryan would turn up carrying his rifle. "That's a pretty unnerving thing to do," says Williams. Hungerford is home to plenty of country sports enthusiasts and a thriving gun shop, so while Ryan may have been "an oddball", he hardly stood out. Tarry knew him by sight. "He was a bit of a loner.

People say 'I knew Michael Ryan well', but when you talk to them, you realise they didn't know him at all." Shortly after midday on 19 August, Ryan approached Susan Godfrey, who was picnicking in nearby Savernake Forest. He marched her away from her two young children and shot her 13 times in the back. Then he climbed into his silver Astra and drove towards Hungerford. Stopping at a petrol station, he shot – and failed to kill – an attendant. Arriving home at South View, a dead-end street at a high point in Hungerford, he shot his dog, doused his house in petrol and set it alight. He got into his car, couldn't start it, and so shot it up. He then set off on foot, with two semi-automatic rifles and a handgun, meandering on to Hungerford's common and then back on to residential streets, shooting people at random. He shot dead his mother, Dorothy, who had arrived on the scene to speak to her son. He killed a dog-walker who had raised his hands in surrender. Many of those he shot were left dying or injured on the streets.

Local people still talk about criticism of the police – just like in Cumbria. While most say these criticisms were unfair, one man, who prefers not to give his name, angrily describes how officers would not let ambulances or residents through roadblocks to treat the injured because Ryan was still firing on everyone. The telephone system in the town collapsed and the police operation was chaotic, but television news carried live pictures from helicopters. There was simply no precedent for Hungerford. Everyone from that day knew, or knew of, those who were killed and injured. Jack Williams remembers Betty Tolladay, who had a house on the edge of the common. She remonstrated with Ryan for, of all things, making such a racket with his guns. He shot her through the hip but she survived. "She ended up the rest of her life in great pain, in a wheelchair," says Williams. "These are the people you don't remember. Brave lady, she was. Sort of lady who would shout over the hedge if you were making a noise – that's fine as long as you don't have a Kalashnikov in your hand." That sounds like a joke but it was reality on that day in Hungerford.

Shortly after the shootings, Tarry and his wife Beryl went to six funerals in one day. They were left most upset by the service for Sandra Hill, who was 22 and had only been in Hungerford to visit old school friends for the day. "Michael Ryan shot her for no reason whatsoever," says Tarry, still sounding baffled. "All the young people were there," says Beryl of the funeral. Hill's parents "never felt the same again", she says. At the 20th anniversary service, Hill's mother told Beryl: "We ought to be surrounded by grandchildren by now, but it hasn't worked out right." Thinking of words to console the people of Cumbria, residents of Hungerford will not say any good came out of such a black day but their grief was turned into a desperate, and positive, energy. "The next morning we were up at 5am thinking, what do we do now?" says Beryl. "It wasn't in the rules – how do you deal with a shooting?" At first, officials advised a buttoned-up approach. Tarry went to Hungerford's small police station and asked what he should do.

"A police constable there said, 'Don't visit the families – leave that to the professionals.' After a couple of days, it soon became obvious that wasn't good advice at all," Tarry says. So the mayor and his wife ignored the instruction; victims' families wanted to talk to people they knew. "When we got there, people said, 'You took your time, come in,'" remembers Beryl. 'It wasn't the same for weeks afterwards' For the next fortnight, their phone rang every minute. It was not merely the media. Members of the public with no connection to Hungerford would call the mayor with their own tales of misery. "People kept telling me their troubles – 'You think you've got troubles, what about this?'" says Beryl. Strangers told her how their husband had been murdered and there had been no public sympathy for them. "People pointed out [this] injustice, which I suppose is quite right," says Tarry. They did not ask for money, they just wanted to share their suffering. When Williams was mayor in 1990, he was phoned in the middle of night by the mayor of Aramoana, New Zealand, after a gunman killed 13 people there.

"He wanted to talk and talk and talk about it," Williams says. "It will always trigger things if you get a multiple killing, especially if it occurs somewhere where there's a small community." On the morning after the shooting, people milled around the town hall. "It used to spook you when you came in here," says Colin Lee, 76, walking up the high street. "People were more subdued. It wasn't the same for weeks afterwards." And yet the tragedy also brought the town hall "to life for the first time", says Williams. "During the period of the tragedy, while we were fundraising, it was alive every day." The volunteers did not just collect donations; they listened. My first impression may have been that Hungerford bottled everything up, but Williams puts me straight: "Pretty well everybody in Hungerford is a gas-bag. We had two good pensioners; they sat in the town hall all day and listened to people. Opening up the town hall gave everybody the chance [to talk]. Talking is one of the essential features. You must talk." The then prime minister Margaret Thatcher surprised residents by visiting Hungerford the following day.

"People said it was just a photo-opportunity, but it wasn't – she seemed to have a tremendous sympathy," says Tarry. "She had the common touch," adds his wife. Donations poured in. Two children held a garage sale and gave £25; Andrew Lloyd Webber held a fundraising concert in Newbury and raised thousands. One local woman quietly donated £10,000. A victims' fund, set up with help from those who had created a similar fund after the 1985 Bradford City stadium fire, raised £1.25m. "The beneficial effect lasted months, if not years," says Tarry. "There was this great spontaneous reaction. People wanted to help because they knew the victims and they also felt it's our reputation, it's Hungerford. It's one of our townsmen who did it." Did residents feel, oddly, responsible? "They felt we were all in it together and we had to do something about it. For that reason, they did feel responsible." 'Now it's history' David Steffe, who owns Howards Pet Care opposite Hungerford police station, grew up in the United States.

He was working in Newbury in 1987, and remembers turning on the television to check the new video-conferencing system he had just set up when he saw footage of the unfolding tragedy. "For the first four or five years, people were still willing to talk about it but now it's history," he says. He received emails from American friends after the Cumbria shootings . "They assume it's routine, like it is in the US, when in fact we've only had three in 25 years, and the whole country gasps for days after something like this." Is he puzzled that the reaction here is less emotional than in the US? Steffe corrects me. "People don't give their opinions as easily as Americans do, but whether they are less emotional, I don't know. It's just more difficult to drag it out of them. They don't offer their opinion so easily, but it's there all right." In 1876, I learn, two policemen were brutally murdered by poachers in Hungerford. "That's akin to the battle of Hastings now – it's part of our history, and now Michael Ryan is part of our history.

It happened, it was awful, but life moves on," says Williams. "Which is just as well, because it can be a raw wound. Chaps like you come back and keep dredging it up. You scratch it and draw blood. But that's your job." The current mayor of Hungerford has been in touch with counterparts in Cumbria, offering help. People in Berkshire don't presume to give those in Cumbria advice, just support and sympathy. "All I can say is it will pass," says Williams. "Time will heal. You must grieve. You mustn't bottle things up, and must not be afraid to cry." Force asks for outside help to assess firearms tactics as Home Office to look into checks on gun owners Published: 9 Jun 2010 Ofcom receives 35 complaints over interview with boy, while 39 voice concern over airing of Coronation Street siege episodes.

By Mark Sweney Published: 9 Jun 2010 People across the region join together to remember dozen killed – and to spare a thought for the gunman's family Published: 9 Jun 2010 Michael White: Once the house has stood in silence for one horrible loss, what does it do next time? David Cameron's next task today was to honour the week's war dead. No minute's silence for them? Published: 9 Jun 2010 A murderous rampage questions assumptions about quiet Britain A murderous rampage questions assumptions about quiet Britain A murderous rampage questions assumptions about quiet Britain Blackleaf #1Jun 6th, 2010 The fact that Wednesday's gun spree, in which taxi driver Derrick Bird travelled 45-miles around the Lake District in Cumbria killing 12 people and injuring 25 took place in a rural area should hardly be surprising - after all, there are just 1.4 million legally registered shotguns in the whole of Britain, which has a population of 62 million, but the vast majority of these gun owners will, of course, be farmers and rural people, who use the guns to shoot pests such as rabbits and crows.

Likewise, the only other two gun sprees in recent British history - Dunblane in 1996 and Hungerford in 1987 - also took place in small rural towns. Britain has probably the strictest gun control in the world, and this gun control DOES work. The UK has one of the lowest killings by firearms in the world - one killing per million people per year - and it has been getting lower. In the year leading up to April 2009, just 39 people were murdered by firearms in the whole of the UK, the lowest for 15 years. In that same period, 35 people were killed in the US each DAY. British gun ownership is also extremely low: there are just 56 guns per thousand people in Britain, compared with 300 per thousand in Germany and 900 in America. And the UK's overall homicide rate, not just that with firearms, is also unusually low. At 1.2 per hundred thousand people, the homicide rate in England and Wales is the second lowest in Europe (although Scotland's is the second-highest). In this safe, Britain is a very safe country to live.

And the British are used to tough gun legislation (which they support) because firearms have been regulated since 1671, when King Charles II banned anyone without property worth ï¿½100 a year from owning guns, bows or ferrets. Handguns were made completely illegal after the 1996 Dunblane massacre. A murderous rampage questions assumptions about quiet Britain Jun 3rd 2010 From The Economist print edition Gun control works: Unlike many other nations, gun crime is very low in the UK, despite the recent Cumbrian killings ï¿½ITï¿½S like watching something from America,ï¿½ said one resident of Whitehaven, a gentle Georgian town on the north-western English coast. Shooting sprees are mercifully rare in Britain, and seem stranger still in the county of Cumbria, a picture-postcard wilderness of hills, sheep and cream teas. But on June 2nd a dozen people were killed and about as many injured when a lone gunman went on a 20-mile killing spree, bizarrely stopping, at one point, for a red light.

No one yet knows what made Derrick Bird attack these people, who seem to have included his twin brother and colleagues from work as well as total strangers, before killing himself. Perhaps no one ever will. One theory is a family dispute of some sort: there are reports of an argument before the shooting rampage. Mr Bird was an apparently normal 52-year-old divorcee who lived apart from his two sons, working as a taxi driver by day and propping up Whitehaven bars in the evening. Friends and neighbours are baffled. Only two other gun massacres have occurred in Britain in modern times, when Thomas Hamilton (left) killed 16 children and their teacher at a primary school in Dunblane, Scotland (when Britain's current number 1 tennis player Andy Murray attended the school) in 1996 and when 27-year-old Michael Ryan went on the rampage in Hungerford, Cambridgeshire in 1987 killing 16. The tragedy will mean that Whitehaven, 2010, goes down in history alongside such grim tags as Dunblane, 1996, and Hungerford, 1987, the only other mass shooting sprees in recent British history.

Thomas Hamilton, a failed businessman and Scout leader, murdered 16 children and a teacher at a primary school in the Scottish town of Dunblane before committing suicide. (Andy Murray, Britainï¿½s best tennis player, was among the pupils in school that day.) In Hungerford, Berkshire, a gun enthusiast called Michael Ryan shot 16 people dead and wounded another 15 before turning his gun on himself. Both the previous shootings led to tougher laws on gun ownership, which were already strict. Firearms have been regulated since 1671, when Charles II banned anyone without property worth ï¿½100 a year from owning guns, bows or ferrets. (Game stocks were the motive, rather than public safety.) Since Dunblane, handguns have been outlawed, meaning that even the Olympic shooting squad has had to train abroad. Because of these strict laws, plus Britainï¿½s relative lack of a hunting culture, gun ownership is unusual: there are just 56 guns per thousand people in Britain, compared with 300 per thousand in Germany and 900 in America.

Gun murders are consequently rare, at just over one killing per million people per year, one of the lowest rates in the rich world. And lately it has been getting lower. In the year to April 2009, 39 people were shot dead in England and Wales, the fewest in more than 15 years. Britain is certainly not without violence: assaults and threats are in fact more common in London than New York, for instance. But its overall homicide rate is modest, at 1.2 per hundred thousand people in England and Wales. None of this matters to the people of Cumbria, who in one day witnessed more murders than had taken place in the county in the previous four years. The investigation will challenge the 1,300 officers of Cumbria Constabulary, which is one of Britainï¿½s smallest forces. Policemen there sometimes go for a year without a single murder to deal with. In 2008-09 officers recorded just 28 firearm offences, including threats made with air-rifles and imitation weapons. It is the ï¿½most exceptional and challenging incidentï¿½ the force has ever had to deal with, it said in a statement.

Attention will focus on how easy it is to come by guns these days. Mr Bird was a licensed firearms-holder for 20 years; the police have confirmed that he had valid permits for the murder weapons (a shotgun and a rifle with telescopic sights). But there is a broader point. Rural Cumbria is hardly gangland, but it is home to a chunk of the 1.4m shotguns that are legally registered in Britain. Each year a few hundred of these find their way out of carelessly guarded farmsï¿½indeed, last year saw a record number of such thefts. Farmers in the region, who have already been warned by the Home Office to keep their fertiliser better protected from bomb-making terrorists, may now face calls to tighten up security on their firearms. It is hard to know what other lessons might be learned from the murders, but politicians should prepare for the answer to be ï¿½noneï¿½. David Cameron, the new prime minister, recently linked a series of shocking crimes to spin a tale of violence and decline that he dubbed ï¿½broken Britainï¿½, a story that was mostly at odds with reality.

Mr Birdï¿½s rampage, along with the recent case of an alleged serial killer of prostitutes in Yorkshire, will make it tempting to resurrect such a narrative. Harder still than understanding the significance of such barbarism may be accepting that it can never be completely prevented. economist.com British Stunned as Gunman Kills 14, Self in Rampage - latimes British Stunned as Gunman Kills 14, Self in Rampage August 20, 1987 |TYLER MARSHALL | Times Staff Writer LONDON — A gun fancier armed with an automatic rifle, a pistol and hand grenades terrorized a quiet English town Wednesday, killing 14 people and wounding 14 others before killing himself. The rampage stunned Britons. It was the worst gun-related incident in memory in a country where the majority of police officers still carry no firearms. The gunman, identified as Michael Ryan, a bachelor in his mid-20s, shot his mother and the family dog, set the family house ablaze, then strolled through his hometown of Hungerford, 60 miles west of London, firing indiscriminately at one person after another as shoppers in the market town fled in panic.

Ryan was finally cornered in a local school, where he turned one of the guns on himself. He was found dead by members of a police assault team that stormed the school. One of the dead was a local police officer who, though unarmed, tried to reason with Ryan. The killing began early in the day about 20 miles west of Hungerford, where Ryan is believed to have shot and killed a woman picnicking with her two children in the woods near the town of Marlborough. The children, aged 4 and 2, were found wandering lost and distraught. Ryan then drove to a service station in the village of Froxfield, six miles west of Hungerford, where he fired at the cashier but missed, and then sped away to Hungerford, a town of 8,000 people. There, dressed in army fatigues and a protective flak jacket and armed with a Soviet-made Kalashnikov AK-47 assault rifle, a pistol and grenades, he wandered the streets, firing at people in their gardens and in their cars. Police closed off the town's roads and called to residents over loudspeakers to stay indoors. Armed police reinforcements were rushed in while police helicopters hovered overhead.

One of his victims was an 84-year-old man who had been working in his garden. Four of the 14 wounded were listed in serious condition at a hospital in the nearest large city, Swindon. Among them was a girl of 10. Many of the wounded were under 18. "He was shooting anything that moved," a witness said. "I just couldn't believe it." Another witness, Jennifer Hibberd, said: "He was just strolling around very calmly and shooting. He was firing his rifle from side to side and reloading from a band of cartridges on the chest of his jacket." Hibberd said she knew Ryan as "rather a lone sort of person" who liked cars. She said he had lived with his mother, who was widowed several years ago. Christopher Bowsher, 29, said he saw Ryan "standing, holding a Kalashnikov rifle on his arm just like 'Rambo.' He threw the rifle down and held a pistol in his other hand." The region's senior police officer, Thames Valley Chief Constable Colin Smith, said that most of the victims died in the first few minutes after the shooting began, although it lasted for about eight hours.

A police inspector said: "It is a complete mystery. We genuinely do not know why he did it." Ryan was born and raised in Hungerford, a small Berkshire market town best known for its trout fishing and antiques. Local residents said that he was a gun fancier, a dealer in old weapons and that he belonged to a gun club. He reportedly had permits for five weapons. Douglas Hogg, an undersecretary of state at the Home Office, said that as a result of the incident, the government will review gun-licensing procedures. Recent mass murders involving guns in England have usually involved families--in 1984, Jeremy Bamber slaughtered five relatives with a rifle--rather than random attacks on strangers, although Barry Williams killed five neighbors in a shooting spree in 1978.

MORE: Hungerford massacre: Reluctant remembrance 25 years on - BBC News BBC News Hungerford massacre: Reluctant remembrance 25 years on By Adam Williams BBC News 18 August 2012 Close share panel Image caption Hungerford's memorial to the 16 people who died on 19 August, 1987 "People just want to forget about it, but they can't," says Bryan Geater, whose daughter was nearly killed by gunman Michael Ryan 25 years ago. Say the name Hungerford and most people will associate the town with the events of Wednesday, 19 August, 1987. That summer afternoon Ryan, a 27-year-old unemployed labourer, killed 16 people, injured 15 more and then turned the gun on himself to end a six-hour shooting spree. He changed the lives of residents in the west Berkshire town forever and society's attitudes towards possessing firearms. With the anniversary this weekend, visit Hungerford today and you will find a town which remembers the tragedy, but respectfully consigns the horrific events to the history books.

'Callously murdered' Mr Geater's daughter Myra was seriously injured by one of Ryan's bullets, which hit her in the leg after flying through the front window of their family home. Who was Michael Ryan? The 27-year-old was one of Hungerford's 5,500 residents and lived with his mother, Dorothy in a terraced house in South View. An only child, Ryan's father Alfred died in 1985, aged 80. He was described by locals as "a loner" and "a gun fanatic". On the day of the shootings, he was armed with two semi-automatic rifles and a handgun. The first of his victims, mother-of-two Susan Godfrey, was shot seven miles to the west of Hungerford, in a picnic area of Savernake Forest, Wiltshire around 12:30 BST. Having murdered 16 people, including his mother, and injuring another 15 in and around Hungerford, he shot himself while barricaded inside a classroom at the John O'Gaunt Community Technology College just before 18:30 BST.

The 74-year-old still lives in the same house with his wife Diana and every year the family leaves town on 19 August to escape mention of the events. But Mr Geater admits a turning point came three years ago when the detached house opposite was demolished and replaced by four new properties. Jack and Myrtle Gibbs were among Ryan's last victims as he entered their Priory Road detached home and shot them. From his porch bench across the road, Mr Geater looks forlornly at the new builds as he ponders the question of what the massacre means a quarter of a century later. He said: "To see that house opposite come down was a God-send. "Jack and Myrtle were great friends of ours, who were callously murdered inside their home.

"To step out the front door everyday and see that was a terrible reminder." He added: "He (Ryan) just flipped that day and the more the media highlights these things, the more it becomes an eye-opener for people who want to try and make a name for themselves, like we keep seeing in these terrible shootings in America." Hungerford will not be marking the 25th anniversary with a memorial service either at the town's St Lawrence Church or by the memorial plaque and gates at the entrance to the football and recreation ground. Raw memories The decision to take a low-key approach was made in 2007, as the then town mayor Peter Harries decided 20 years was a better time to remember the events. And that's how many people in Hungerford want it to be conducted. Image caption Michael Ryan set his former home in South View, Hungerford, alight during the shootings The Reverend Andrew Sawyer moved to Hungerford in 1990, while memories were still raw. He said: "There'll be prayers during the Sunday service and we'll mark it in the same way we do every year.

There's a small memorial by the vestry inside the church and fresh flowers will be placed in a vase beneath it. "The town has moved on dramatically in terms of population and character in 25 years. What Michael Ryan did that day is only a small part of Hungerford's history, it doesn't define it. "It's understandable when people don't want to talk about it. Within the town, there's a reticence, we don't want to be labelled forever because of what Michael Ryan did. "But of course, it was the first place where one of these terrible tragedies happened." No warning signs Ron Tarry was the town's mayor in 1987. In the months and years which followed, he helped play a part in setting up a memorial fund for the victims' relatives which raised in excess of £1m. Image caption Ron Tarry: "Nobody had any idea it would happen" Years later, he would also be contacted by families affected by similar shooting sprees, by Thomas Hamilton in Dunblane in 1996 and Derek Bird in Whitehaven, Cumbria, in 2010.

He said: "People from both towns would call me and say 'how did you deal with it all?' "In Dunblane, it was hard to compare, as Thomas Hamilton went out and deliberately shot at children in a school. "There were warning signs about him in the run-up to that tragic day, he was known to authorities and was being watched. If all that information had been put together then something or someone could have stopped it. "With Michael Ryan, nothing like that was feasible. Nobody had any idea it would happen and I think there's absolutely no way anyone could have avoided it." Following the massacre, the government came under pressure to tighten the law on gun ownership. The resulting Firearms (Amendment) Act 1988 banned a variety of weapons and controls were tightened further after the Dunblane killings.

Question: Which lone gunman went on the rampage around the town of Hungerford in 1987?
Answer: Michael Ryan